President Obama stirred up a hornets' nest when he declared during his highly anticipated Middle East speech Thursday that Israel's borders should be based on the pre-1967 lines. He added enough caveats to render his demand unattainable from a practical standpoint, but, as a matter of political and strategic perception, Obama has inflicted a serious wound on America's most reliable ally. For that reason, it's important to understand what Obama is demanding of Israel.

If Israel were to return to the lines that existed before its defeat of invading armies from three of its Arab neighbors in the 1967 Six Day War, the nation would be left with a constricted sliver of land only nine miles wide at its narrowest point. That would be roughly equivalent to the distance between the downtown areas of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota's Twin Cities. Israel would lose control of Jerusalem and its holy sites. When Arabs controlled the sites before 1967, Jews were banned from visiting them and they fell into disrepair. Since then, Israel restored them and has preserved them for access by all religions for future generations. In addition, reverting to the pre-1967 status quo would mean that the 300,000 Jews currently living in Judea and Samaria would end up in the new Palestinian state.

Even if Israel were to accept these crushing preconditions, there's no reason to believe that doing so would lead to peace. Arab possession of the disputed territories before 1967 did not prevent three major Arab-Israeli wars. Nor did it prevent the Arab League from forming the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964, a terrorist group whose original charter called for the eradication of Zionism. The PLO has allegedly renounced terrorism, and its current leader, Mahmoud Abbas, is supposed to pass as a Palestinian peace partner.

Yet the PLO recently agreed to form a unity government with Hamas, which the U.S. government considers a terrorist organization. Over the past decade, Hamas has targeted Israeli civilians with a campaign of suicide bombings and rocket attacks and has never renounced its own 1988 charter calling for the destruction of Israel. The PLO and Hamas have clearly formed an unholy alliance: Imagine if America were in a land dispute with Mexico and, ahead of the negotiations, Mexico decided to let al Qaeda join its government.

Obama did say the new borders he envisions would involve land swaps that would have to be mutually agreed to, which effectively means nothing will happen with the peace process. Israel offered the Palestinians a similar deal in 2000, including a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, but their leader, the late terrorist Yasser Arafat, rejected it. Palestinian leaders have changed over the years, as have their grievances, but the one constant throughout the decades has been that they have never accepted any Jewish presence in the region. Forcing Israel into making such concessions won't change that reality.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a rousing speech to a joint session of Congress, in which he praised the strong ties between America and Israel, warned of the dangers of a nuclear Iran, and laid out his vision for peace with Palestinians when they're ready to negotiate.

He received an overwhelmingly positive reception from Congress, with C-SPAN reporting 26 standing ovations.

At one point, his speech was disrupted by a protestor who unfurled a banner about "occupation" and shouted "End Israeli war crimes."

Without wavering, Netanyahu celebrated the fact that there were protesters in true democracies, unlike the "farcical parliaments" of Tehran and Tripoli.

Netanyahu argued that in a region of 300 million Arabs, Israeli Arabs were the only ones who were truly free.

"Israel is not what is wrong about the Middle East," he declared. "Israel is what is right about the Middle East."

Netanyahu reiterated that all options must be on the table for stopping a nuclear Iran.

"We are a nation that rose from the ashes of the Holocaust," he said. "When we say never again, we mean never again."

As for the conflict with the Palestinians, Netanyahu explicitly endorsed a Palestinian state. His proposal called for a peace that would involve Israeli withdrawal from areas in the West Bank, with defensible Israeli borders that reflect that hundreds of thousands of Jews live beyond the 1967 lines. He also said the descendants of Palestinian refugees would have to settle in a new Palestinian state if they choose, thus rejecting the concept of the so called "right of return." The idea of letting all descendants of Palestinians into Israeli is a way to destroy the Jewish state through other means -- by flooding it with Arab populations.

Netanyahu also made clear that he would not negotiate with any government that includes the terrorist group Hamas.

As he put it:

Hamas is not a partner for peace. Hamas remains committed to Israel's destruction and to terrorism. They have a charter. That charter not only calls for the obliteration of Israel, but says ‘kill the Jews wherever you find them’. Hamas’ leader condemned the killing of Osama bin Laden and praised him as a holy warrior. Now again I want to make this clear. Israel is prepared to sit down today and negotiate peace with the Palestinian Authority. I believe we can fashion a brilliant future of peace for our children. But Israel will not negotiate with a Palestinian government backed by the Palestinian version of Al Qaeda.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a rousing speech to a joint session of Congress, in which he praised the strong ties between America and the Jewish state, warned of the dangers of a nuclear Iran, and laid out his vision for peace with Palestinians when they're ready to negotiate.

If the overwhelming response Netanyahu received is any indication, it will be tremendously difficult for President Obama to pressure Israel into making unrealistic concessions, especially with a government that includes a terrorist group.

Without wavering, Netanyahu celebrated the fact that there were protesters in true democracies, unlike the "farcical parliaments" of Tehran and Tripoli.

I guess some protester started making noise, and you know what? That's cool, or, I mean, people can do that here. Does Iran have a congress? Do people ever show up there and unfurl pro-Israeli banners, shouting this and that? I don't know.

"Israel is not what is wrong about the Middle East," he declared. "Israel is what is right about the Middle East."

I'm not so sure there is a wrong and a right, or where each country stands. I feel for both peoples (the Israelis and the Palestinians), but wonder what other Mid East powers would do were they in Israel's place. How would they deal with Palestinians? How would they deal with protesters? Israel ain't all that great, but it's no <insert other Mid East country name here>.

If the overwhelming response Netanyahu received is any indication, it will be tremendously difficult for President Obama to pressure Israel into making unrealistic concessions, especially with a government that includes a terrorist group.

I believe President Obama did more harm than "good" with his statement that "We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps." Of course that was gonna be a starting point! I mean, were Jordan, Egypt, or Syria also gonna throw in land? Maybe we should let the Israelis decide what they will do with land that they won in war. Right or wrong, it is their choice to make.

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Last edited by JustSomeGuy on 25 May 2011 20:21, edited 1 time in total.

Seems like a fairly reasonable suggestion.Israel should either incorporate the West Bank into Israel proper with full legal and voting rights for all the people living there, let the Palestinians keep it for their own state or at the very least give it back to Jordan. Keeping the entire area under military occupation indefinitely isn't really a viable answer, as we've been seeing for the last four decades.

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I'm at the point where I don't even have an opinion anymore, the situation over there is so royally fucked. My only real opinion at this point is that Israel has to start making some more concessions to Palestine so they can start moving past this, they're never going to get far if they all keep squabling over who ones which square inch of dirt. Both sides are causing problems here, but if Israel doesn't take the high road nobody's ever going to as far as I can see.

I feel pretty confident this will still be going on 100 years from now, unless the Islamic extremists win and take over the whole planet.

Freakzilla wrote:I believe Isreals main problem is that the Hamas (Palestinian) charter calls for the destruction of Isreal and the Jews. How do you negotiate with that?

Palestine has to recognize Isreal's right to exist before any progress can be made.

I don't dissagree, but I don't think Palestine/Hamas will do that until the common people start having less reasons to hate Israel, I think the ground up aproach is better than top down. Hamas isn't going to stop wanting to kill off all the Jews, but the Palestinian populace might eventually decide to oust Hamas/whateverextremsitsatthetime if their hatred is slowly chipped away at and they eventually start seeing their leaders as a liability.

That's just what I've got at the moment though, and it's not like I'd expect anyone to take my advice when all advice leads down the same road in that place... straight to more shit, and then some shit after that.

I've said it before - we've gotta go in and grab everyone that lives in that area, move them somewhere nice with all their possessions and family...

... and then nuke the place into the damned ocean. I mean it, put so many craters in the whole area that the Mediteranean just floods in and swallows every bit of land they're fighting over. Screw that holy land, the whole planet would be better off without it.